Will Rose has been in the Jive Community for four years now. In my mind, that makes him an expert here! I had to stalk him a little bit to give you a summary, since he and I have never worked together before this interview. Here's what I found.

Will has been the enterprise community manager for T-mobile's external community which has around 60,000 users. His community, which serves T-mobile's customers, is on fire with content which reflects how hot mobile is in the world right now. How does Will manage it all? Find out by reading his interview below.

Libby: Where do you work (location, in the office, remotely, etc.)?

Will: I work for T-Mobile USA, the nation's 4th largest wireless service provider, and am based at our corporate headquarters in Bellevue, Washington. Everything you've heard about Seattle weather is absolutely true! 9 months out of the year we're the most dedicated worker bees, but when that sun gods bless us, you'll likely find us on the lake.

LT: How would you describe your current job?

Will: I lead a team of technical wizards within the Knowledge Management organization which reports into Customer Service. We're something of a Shadow IT operation. We do it all -- from requirements gathering and UI/UX design to development and deployment. We take pride in saying "Yes!" when IT says "No".

LT: That's sounds pretty cool! How do you use Jive at work (internal, external, etc)?

Will: We've pretty much done it all (perhaps not all of it particularly well...) with Jive. With 8 Jive instances (7 hosted, 1 cloud), we have something for pretty much everyone. We have a more traditional Customer Support community (support.t-mobile.com) where we house both Support documentation and customer peer-to-peer discussions. And that's about where the 'traditional' use cases stop. We have a community used primarily as a knowledge base for our front-line Customer Service (call center) and Sales (retail) representatives. We also have several communities which are more strictly 'locked down' and used as knowledge bases to support various 'partner brands' (see support.gosmartmobile.com) and retail partners (you know, like those kiosks you see in malls). Seems weird to use a social software like Jive in a reduced or completely 'read-only' state, but we love how easy Jive has made it for us to customize the experience.

LT: What's your preference: Mac or PC (or something else)?

Will: Both? The Mac is my daily driver, but IT likes to remind me T-Mobile is a Windows shop. There aren't many folks at T-Mobile who use Macs... there are so few that IT almost refuses to support them. To combat this, I started a Mac Users group in our community for us to connect and share workarounds. That VPN setup IT didn't know how to set up on a Mac? Documented! That cloud printing service that we were told would only work with a PC? Documented!

LT: You really are a Shadow IT Hero! What mobile device do you use?

Will: iPhone 5s / iPad Air. I used to be a hardcore Android user, flashing custom ROMs and whatnot, but I've given in completely to the will of Steve Jobs. The Apple ecosystem has me and I can't let it go.

LT: If I forced you to pick one word that best describes how you work, what would it be?

Will: My iPad. I haven't exactly gotten on the 'use my tablet for work' train yet, but it is great for playing games and surfing the ol' Interweb.

LT: What's your favorite to-do list manager?

Will: The sticky notes on my monitor. If it aint there, it aint getting done!

LT: What you surround yourself with is important, what's your workspace like?

Will: Here, take a look!

LT: Nice view! What's your best time-saving trick?

Will: If i saved any more time I think they'd question the need for my position!

LT: How do you balance work and life?

Will: I come in late and leave early. Seriously. I have a two-year old and try to maximize my time with him vs. maximizing the time the daycare has with him. That might mean I get to the office around 9 and try to start wrapping things up around 4. After he goes to bed though I pull the laptop back out and finish anything up I didn't get to or simply get a jump on the next day.

LT: That's exactly what I did when my kids were still little. It really makes things work better at home.

LT: Nice view! What do you listen to while you work?

Will: I'm pretty eclectic when it comes to music (sorry country fans, you can check your twang at the door) so the playlist can vary from The Beatles to 2Pac, Adele to Skrillex. I try not to go directly from 'poppin a cap' to 'rollin in the deep', but you never know what can happen when you hit Shuffle.

Here's what happens when I put 2Pac a little too close to Adele and then shake them up in Photoshop. Plus I found some delicious mash-ups for your enjoyment (warning Tupac's language is not for the faint of heart):

Will: Not awesome. I try to get to sleep by midnight and I'm back up around 6:30.

LT: Are you more of an introvert or an extrovert?

Will: I'm the most extroverted introvert you'll ever meet! x2 after I have a beer... or two...

LT: Would that make it extroverted introvert x4? Sounds like fun.

LT: What's the best advice you've ever received (and from whom)?

Will: Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Thanks Stephen Covey! The '5 Habits of Highly Effective People' is a great book. I have to be honest, I didn't go into it thinking much of these 'corporate self-help' books, but this one was worth the read!

To thank Will Rose for his responses to this interview, I've made him a magical montage of the people, things, and terms that capture his workstyle. And it's in a handy dandy Facebook header photo-size in case he wants to highlight his workstyle there and can be popped into Twitter as a background image as well. Super handy.